Who says what is Coalition policy?

Posted on April 14, 2011 by

David Cameron wants to reduce immigration and says so. How far he’ll be able to do so given the EU directives on the subject and the various bits of Labour legislation that shows no sign of an early disappearance from the Statute Book is anyone’s guess – but don’t hold your breath! Oh! and I nearly forgot the vogue for judicial activism too!

However, he is the Prime Minister in a Coalition government and he ought to be able to speak with authority on the Coalition’s behalf. Yet here we have Cable not just disagreeing with Cameron as a Liberal Democrat but usurping his position into the bargain by laying down what is Coalition policy and what isn’t.

Isn’t it time Cameron and/or Clegg called this maverick to order?

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What’s wrong with BRITISH golf?

Posted on April 10, 2011 by

Watching the Masters late last night, I was struck by the fact that all golfers now seem to be labelled by nationality complete with national flags etc. against their names. However the British ones have either English, Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish. Spanish have Spanish flags whether Castilian or Catalan. Germans are Germans, even if they’re Bavarian or from North-Rhine Westphalia. Americans are American and have the Stars and Stripes regardless of which state they come from from Maine to Hawaii.

So why are we alone apparently determined to adopt iconography in sport which pretends that the UK does not exist and which creates the strong impression that it is only a matter of time before its dissolution?

Next year it seems we are to have the ultimate farce. We stage the Olympics in which local particularisms are blissfully not indulged in this way. Football is an Olympic sport and Britain gave the game to the world – yet no British team will compete for a medal in our own country because the officials who promote and perpetuate the pernicious practice of having four separate ‘national’ teams will not agree to a single national team to play in British colours under the British flag. Who knows, if they did, it might even win the Gold! And then a British team might get further than the quarter finals in the World Cup. Now wouldn’t that be something?

 

Posted in Media, Sport | 2 Comments

The Referendum cometh!

Posted on April 9, 2011 by

We have war in Afghanistan. We have another one possibly in Libya. Inflation is picking up. The Brown Budget Deficit is still with us and hitting hard – and the Euro is falling apart thanks to the daft idea that 17 different countries from Ireland to Greece and Finland to Cyprus can all start using a single currency in the twinkling of an eye and all behave like West Germany in the 1970s!

In the midst of all this we have a Referendum on whether to adopt the least popular method of electing MPs in the whole world – where they elect them at all, that is! ‘Barmy!’ I hear you cry – and you’re right!

HOWEVER, the worst thing people of sanity can do is to throw up their hands and say ‘I’m having nothing to do with it!’ and not vote. If you do that you leave it open to the celebrities and change-for-the-sake-of-it mongers to impose their half-baked scheme on the rest of us for good and all. Whoever you are and whatever your politics, please vote NO!

The system does not guarantee proportionality of seats. Far from it. It is not what the Lib Dems have campaigned for for decades, which makes their support for it such rank hypocrisy. They probably think that Labour voters will give the Lib Dems second preference against the Tories. But I have news for them. In large tracts of the South and West, where current or recent Lib Dem local authorities abound, lots of Labour activists and voters prefer the Tories to the Lib Dems. Quite a lot lent their votes to the Lib Dems in 2010 but they may well not do so again. Here in Kingston is a strong case in point.

Lib Dem supporters of AV hope it will lead to PR in the short term as its defects become apparent in practice. They are buying a pig in a poke if that’s what they think. What government is going to introduce a major constitutional change like this again within the next few decades? Australians have been critical of their system for decades (they are the only major country to use it, by the way) yet it is still there, largely because every government is nervous about kicking away the ladder by which it climbed to power.

So would everyone please think carefully about their vote on 5th May and find out as much as you can and ask yourself seriously whether this system is the one by which you want to elect MPs (and probably councillors too) for the rest of your life. If you want either to keep the present system – or to change to PR of some sort – then vote NO. It’s the only logocal thing to do.

 

Posted in Campaigning, Conservatives, Elections, Labour, Lib Dems, Politics | 1 Comment

There’s more to electoral reform………..

Posted on October 1, 2010 by

………than the voting system and I’m dismayed in the extreme that we are apparently to have a referendum on it next May! This is far too short a time to consider all the aspects of the subject that should be addressed calmly and thoroughly.

It’s not long since a judge described aspects of our current electoral procedures as being suited to ‘a banana republic’. He was dead right!

One should start with the Register of electors. It is now ‘updated’ every month, not annually as formerly. This is supposed to give a more accurate register and the coming of the computer makes it possible. But most local authorities employ only three or four people in the Electoral Registration Dept., no more now than they did 20 years ago.

  • What verification is there on a monthly basis that all the claims of people to reside at whatever address are in fact accurate? You can’t do the checking monthly that used to happen annually.
  • What verification is there that the people named are of the legal age or nationality or even exist?
  • What checks are there that people are not registered at multiple addresses and vote more than once at the same election?
  • Since anyone can ask for a postal vote just because they want one, what guarantees do we have that ballot papers are completed by the actual person named?

Answer to all the above? Almost none. The cases of electoral fraud that do come to light often do so accidentally and I am fairly certain that they represent only the tip of the iceberg. If we want ‘fair elections’ – and I think we do – shouldn’t we address this problem as a priority?

Posted in Elections, Kingston, Politics | Leave a comment

L’Affaire Laws

Posted on May 30, 2010 by

Three questions remain unanswered about the rapid and regrettable departure of the Chief Secretary to the Treasury.

  1. Why did a man of his undoubted intelligence get himself into such a pickle in the first place?
  2. Did he not realise that, to the press/public mind the details would look like one of the more lurid tales to emerge from the Expenses scandal?
  3. Why did the Telegraph apparently sit on the information until now when much of it must have been known weeks if not months ago?

Laws says that he wanted to keep his sexuality a private matter. No-one surely would deny his right to do that. To avoid the possibility of the ‘scandal’ that has engulfed him, however, he would have been wiser not to live with his partner, pretending that the relationship between them was purely landlord-tenant. Alternatively he could have acknowledged that he was living with his partner and that he had, with him, a second home in London. He could have claimed ACA on the mortgage, depending on which he designated as his second home but he wouldn’t be able to tell the electors of Yeovil recently that his only home was in Yeovil; a point he made much of in the General Election campaign. It is probable that, if he had been open about it from the start, the electors of Yeovil would have voted for him just the same and he wouldn’t have been vulnerable to lurid revelations such as those on yesterdy’s Telegraph front page.

Of course, a few weeks ago he probably didn’t expect to be a Cabinet Minister quite so soon. Certainly for most of the years in question the possibility simply didn’t arise, unless he were to defect to either the Tories or Labour. And, by comparison with Labour and the Tories, the Lib Dems had come out of the Telegraph’s Expenses Scandal of last year looking rather snowy white. Lib Dem MPs and candidates made much of this at the GE – among them David Laws, who boasted of not having been required to pay back anything after the enquiry, unlike Tory Oliver Letwin in a nearby constituency, who had to pay back over £3000.  We shall see what the Commissioner for Standards concludes in this case.

One can only guess at the Telegraph’s motives in making these revelations now and not before the Election or last year. It’s possible they only just found out, though their relentless pursuit of so many over minor issues about duck houses and moats suggests  they may have had a lot of this material on file for some time. They certainly seem to know a great deal about the financial side of Mr. Laws relationship stretching back to 2001. Sadly I think the Telegraph has gone into something of a decline since the Barclay Brothers took it over.  I do not suggest they should have suppressed this story, but I do wonder at the timing of its release.

Posted in Elections, Lib Dems, Media, Politics | Leave a comment

Well I’m blowed!

Posted on May 14, 2010 by

I have just received the Ineffable Davey’s letter to voters (the ‘handwritten’ one!) dated 1st May! I am  at a loss to understand why he’s put it out now. Perhaps our local LD ‘Focus’ Team only just got around to it!

Needless to say it is the usual diatribe against the Conservative party, which had been out of power nationally since 1997 and hasn’t had ‘control’ of Kingston since 1994. Not that Ed ever admits to that, of course.

It contains direct untruths in his own hand.

  • The Tories ‘tried to undermine my campaign to protect Health Services at Kingston Hospital.’ That ‘undermining’ consisted of getting undertakings from the person who is now Prime Minister and the one who is now Health Secretary that there would be no such closures. Davey did not get anything useful done. Helen Whately did.
  • He goes on to invent a story about Conservative proposals to ‘cut local schools’ funding.’ I’ve been racking my brains to think where he can possibly have got this from. The only conclusion I can arrive at is  – he made it up! This is on a par with all the other Lib Dem scare stories that proliferated during the campaign. But Davey has to take personal responsibility for these. They are in his own fair hand.

He goes on to say ‘I hope people know me well enough now……….’ Sadly, they evidently don’t – but some of us DO.

Posted in Campaigning, Elections, Kingston, Lib Dems, Politics | Leave a comment

A week is a long time……….

Posted on May 14, 2010 by

Firstly, let me thank all the people who have sent messages of support during the time since last Friday. I’ve had letters and emails from all the active Residents’ Associations in Surbiton Hill and many Borough organisations and individual constituents expressing sympathy and thanks.

We move on. The Conservative Party in Westminster has gone into coalition with the  Liberal Democrats for the welfare of the country, and because they couldn’t form a stable government on their own. My views on the Liberal Democrats are well known. All views are, however, open to be modified by experience and I hope that experience of  Messrs. Clegg, Huhne, Laws, Alexander and Cable in office will lead to a modification on my part.

I wish the Coalition government well.  Let us hope that the Lib Dem ministers will put national interest before party interest and that the party itself will grow up at last! So far, so good – but but there will inevitably be strains in both parties in the months and years ahead.

However, our country faces very grave difficulties – graver than many have been willing to acknowledge, so, in Churchill’s words ‘Let us go forward together!’

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